Back in 1974, at Oberlin College, Herbert Blau led a group of students in developing a production about the ill-fated Donner Party. The cast was a promising one, including Bill Irwin and Michael O’Connor, with whom I toured for years in The Regard of Flight. I was a composition student at the time, and contributed three songs. Now, all these years later, Jim Eigo and Marjorie Hayes are resurrecting it at the University of North Texas. You can find more info here.

ADDENDUM: A video of the production has been posted on YouTube. My songs are at 19:36, 42:49, and 1:32:00.

A puzzle for the readers of Typo, slated for the fifth issue. To get you started, the first four letters are LONG.

The Rat Wins! is now available from Black Scat Books!

Writer Lucien Descaves and illustrator Lucien Laforge were anarchist activists dismayed by World War I. They cooked up this mordant little satire, pointing out that the real winner of any war is the rat, who feasts on all the corpses–with the suggestion that war profiteers are rats too. It was scheduled for publication in 1917, but banned by the authorities, and didn’t make it to print until 1920.

Written by Lucien Descaves, illustrated by Lucien Laforge, and translated by Doug Skinner. Designed by Derek Pell to resemble the original edition.

And you can find it on Amazon!

Some free-flowing piano music…

TYPO 4 is now available from Black Scat Books! I contributed an article on typos of the word “typo” (“Typo’s Typos”) and a translation of “Cubist Tale” by Gabriel de Lautrec. My fellow contributors are Tim Newton Anderson, Michael Betancourt, David Brizer, Steve Carll, Norman Conquest, Farewell Debut, R J Dent, Jesse Glass, Reinhard Goering, Rhys Hughes, Tim Hutchings, Mark Kanak, M. Kasper, Amy Kurman, Emilia Loseva, Jim McMenamin, O Homem do Saco, Jasia Reichardt, Doug Rice, Paul Rosheim, Franciszka Themerson, Stefan Thernerson, John Vieira, Gregory Wallace, and Danny Winkler. You will also find translations of eight Russian Futurists: Velimir Khlebnikov, Igor Terentjev, Aleksey Kruchenykh, Vasily Kamensky, Pavel Kokorin, Tykhon Churylin, Bodjidar (Bogdan Gordejev), and David Burliuk.

Edited by Norman Conquest and available from Amazon!

Once again, Meg Reichardt assembled a group of musicians in Brooklyn to record a holiday album. I sent in my song from upstate, and called in Brian Dewan to record it. It’s called “The Terrier’s Christmas,” and gives a canine perspective on the holidays. My fellow contributors are Kurt Hoffman, Meg Reichardt, Tisha Pryor, Brian Dewan, Mia Theodoratus, Nina Kennedy, and Ezekiel Healy. And you can hear the whole album here on Bandcamp.

We Are Not Sheep is now available from Black Scat Books!

This delightful collection, first published in 1896, shows the peerless French humorist Alphonse Allais in full pursuit of the ridiculous. You’ll find  a painter who trains bats to act as a parasol, the love life of a one-man band, a plan to make sandals from the skin of the poor, the military use of legless soldiers, the man who couldn’t decide where to put his beard when he slept, and much more: 44 stories, plus four extra stories selected for this edition. Translated, annotated, and introduced by Doug Skinner. Designed by Norman Conquest, and with a frontispiece by Corinne Taunay.

And it’s available on Amazon.

A melancholy poem from Bed Bug.

LORD BEDBUG

Lord Bedbug crawls upon his throne
Of spattered sheets and spotted ticking,
Where he commands the nightly pricking
That makes our vital force his own.

Ah, have you now seen Bedbug plain?
And has he used you for his feeding,
And stuffed his gut with all the bleeding
That trickled from your punctured vein?

Such is our fate. We’re only food,
The special on the midnight menu.
He picks the time; he picks the venue;
Our lot is simply servitude.

We hold no franchise in the deal,
For we’re the sheep, and he’s the shepherd.
Our counterpane is always peppered
With leavings from our master’s meal.

We pay allegiance to our lord,
For he’s the liege, and we’re the vassals.
He takes our couches for his castles;
Our beds are his, and we’re his board.

For the magazine Bed Bug, this variation: a canon on the letters BEDBAG.

Bed Bug: A Magazine of the Arts is now available from Black Scat Books! Here’s the description from its editor, Norman Conquest:

As the world comes to an end, and the bed bug infestation spreads from France throughout Europe, it is time for a journal devoted to infestation, invasion, and chaos.

Featuring works by Alphonse Allais, Tim Anderson, Tom Bradley, Norman Conquest, Farewell Debut, R J Dent, Larry Fondation, Jesse Glass, Boris Glikman, Rhys Hughes, Harold Jaffe, Amy Kurman, Terri Lloyd, John-Ivan Palmer, Jason E. Rolfe, Paul Rosheim, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Doug Skinner, Yuriy Tarnawsky, Corinne Taunay, Catrin Welz-Stein, Tom Whalen, Carol White, and D. Harlan Wilson.

I contributed a translation of a story by Alphonse Allais (“An Excellent Trick”), a poem (“Lord Bedbug”), and a piano piece (“BEDBAG”). And you can find it on Amazon!